_Butchers_:—The position which women took in the Butchers’ trade resembled very closely their position as bakers, for, as has been shown, the special advantages which women, by virtue of their domestic training, might have enjoyed when trading as bakers, were cancelled by the statutes and bye-laws limiting the numbers of those engaged in this trade. As wife or widow women were able to enter either trade equally. Both trades were subject to minute supervision in the interests of the public, and as a matter of fact, from the references which happen to have been preserved, it might even appear that the wives of butchers were more often interested in the family business than the wives of bakers. An Act of Henry VIII. “lycensyng all bochers for a tyme to sell vytell in grosse at theyr pleasure” makes it lawful for any person “to whom any complaynt shuld be made upon any Boucher his wyff servaunte or other his mynysters refusing to sell the said vitayles by true and lawfull weight ... to comytt evry such Boucher to warde,”[482] shows an expectation that the wife would act as her husband’s agent. But the wife’s position was that of partner, not servant. During the first half of the century, certainly, leases were generally made conjointly to husband and wife; for example, “Phillip Smith and Elizabeth, his wife” appeared before the Corporation at Reading “desiringe a new lease of the Butcher’s Shambles, which was granted.”[483] Footnote 482: Statutes 27, Henry VIII., c. 9. Footnote 483: Guilding, _Reading Records_, Vol. IV., p. 122. Customs at Nottingham secured the widow’s possession of her husband’s business premises even without a lease, providing that “when anie Butcher shall dye thatt holds a stall or shopp from the towne, thatt then his wyefe or sonne shall hould the same stall or shopp, they vsinge the same trade, otherwaies the towne to dispose thereof to him or them thatt will give moste for the stall or shopp: this order to bee lykewise to them thatt houlds a stall in the Spice-chambers.”[484] Footnote 484: _Nottingham Records_, Vol. V., p. 284, 1654.